This is part of a Playbook series featuring conversations with California’s new class of state lawmakers. NEW KID: Maggy Krell is the first new assemblymember to represent her Sacramento district in nearly a decade, and she’s keen to pave her own path. Krell took over the seat from longtime Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, who gave up a final term to run his successful campaign for Sacramento mayor. She effectively won her election in the primary, beating out a group of Democrats with lots of help from business-driven independent expenditure spending, particularly dialysis clinic chain DaVita. As we’ve previously reported, Krell then spent the general election — an all-but-sewn-up race against a Republican — campaigning in Reno for a Nevada abortion ballot measure. That move tracked with Krell’s background. She previously worked as chief legal counsel for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and helped sex trafficking victims as deputy attorney general. Playbook sat down with Krell to discuss her top policy priorities and how she plans to put her experience to use at the Capitol. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You are stepping into a role that another person has held for almost 10 years. What do you want to bring to the job? I think what I bring that nobody else brings is legal scholarship. I've been a practicing lawyer for 21 years now, and I really use the law in different ways to try and make people's lives better. And you'll see it in my work — statutory construction, that's my love language. So now I'm in a position to help craft laws during what will be a really difficult time. You have a bill right off the bat around abortion rights. Can you talk about your priorities? My day-one bill will help shore up access to medication abortion. Even though the voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 1 two years ago for a constitutional right to abortion, that right is only meaningful if we can continue to access it. So my bill will ensure that our supply, our transportation, our receipt of medications used for abortion are still accessible for patients and their providers. I also want to work more broadly on access to health care. There's still difficult challenges where people are forced to pay high out-of-pocket expenses for medical equipment. I worked with a human trafficking victim who needed a respirator that was really expensive — wasn't covered. A constituent of mine talked to me about their family's experience with being offered a certain kind of cancer screening — wasn't covered. I plan to continue to focus on [human trafficking]. We've had a lot of conversation in the Legislature around what should happen to the defendants in those cases — how much time they should do. It’s important to hold them accountable, and that's what I've done throughout my career. But I also think it's really important to listen to survivors and what their needs are and why it's so difficult for them to heal, to recover, to live successful lives, to thrive after what they've been through, and how we can better support their needs and also prevent this crime in the first place. When you first started your campaign, no one knew what was going to happen with the presidential election. Has the fact that President-elect Donald Trump is going to be inaugurated in a month changed your policy priorities? I was Planned Parenthood's lawyer the last time he was in the White House. And it was a nightmare. I mean, it was really challenging. We had immigrant patients who were scared to show up to clinic visits. By showing up and receiving Medi-Cal they could risk getting deported. We had clinics receiving federal notices and not knowing whether they were going to continue to receive funding. We had major cuts to the Title 10 program. So there are all these ways that accessing reproductive health care were challenging during that time. That's what we need to be prepared for. IT’S WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. This is California Playbook PM, a POLITICO newsletter that serves as an afternoon temperature check on California politics and a look at what our policy reporters are watching. Got tips or suggestions? Shoot an email to lholden@politico.com.
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